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This paper describes student outcomes from participating in a week-long out-of-school action civics program designed to increase students’ civic and political competence and engagement. Using analysis from four years of survey data, this paper presents findings related to changes in students’ civic competence as a result of participating in the program, including findings related to both first time and repeat campers. Data revealed that participants experienced gains in half of the civic competence construct variables, with first-time campers experiencing significant gains in five of the civic competence construct variables. Data analysis suggests that iEngage, an action civics summer experience, was effective in increasing elements of students’ civic competence, including their ability to get people to care about a problem, organize and run a meeting, write an opinion letter or contact a media outlet to express their views, and contact an elected official or community leader to address an issue.

To what extent do leaders of nonprofit organizations run for elected office? We address this question through an exploratory study using survey data from a random sample of 184 leaders of nonprofit human service organizations in the United States. Drawing upon theories of political ambition, we explore the factors that may shape nascent political ambition (propensity to run) as well as expressive political ambition (running for office). We find that nonprofit leaders are no more likely to run for office than the average citizen, but interest in running is much more common. We identify several individual-level and professional socialization factors associated with political ambition. Our study makes an important theoretical contribution by outlining a model of political ambition for the nonprofit sector that can be tested in future studies, and makes an important practical contribution by highlighting ways that associations and nonprofit industry groups might convert nascent ambition into expressive ambition.

It is a hallmark of a science-based profession that its members conduct and publish research. In her 2012 address to the Police Superintendents Association for England and Wales, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom called on the British police to do just that. Since the Home Secretary is equivalent to the Attorney General of the United States or the Minister of Interior in many other countries as the chief elected official responsible for policing, her injunction to publish research is a major reflection on the police profession. This volume is one response to her injunction. It will not be the last. Police research was once the sole domain of professional social scientists. No longer. Police professionals now make major contributions to research, just as practicing professionals do in other fields. Medical research is full of practicing clinicians, many of whom split their time between research and practice. Surgeons are first authors of important research articles, with their statisticians in second authorship spots. This volume reflects an aspiration to see the same pattern develop in policing in which research leadership moves from academics to professionals. The articles in this volume are therefore as remarkable for their authorship as they are for their contents. Fully half of the authors are current or former police professionals. Five of the seven first authors of these articles are police professionals. All of the police professionals hold master’s degrees in evidence-based policing from the University of Cambridge, and one (Peter Neyroud) is a Cambridge PhD candidate—after commanding thousands of police officers in two large British police agencies. They are all in the vanguard of the kind of evidence-based police profession that the U.K.’s new ‘‘College’’ of Policing (a professional membership and standard-setting body founded in 2012) is designed to promote, by identifying and applying the best evidence of what works in policing for over its core membership of 200,000 U.K. police professionals (see www.college.police.uk) and academics from universities across Britain. Authors in this volume are also active in the Society of Evidence-Based Policing (SEBP; www.sebp.police.uk), whose 2,000 members globally are linked to universities on four continents and whose winter 2015 U.K. conference included presentations from police-research partnerships from nine universities and police services.

What are the decision-making criteria used by public admin istrators in recommending which goods and services should be provided by local governments? Do city managers and administrators base their decisions on political criteria such as citizen support, elected official buy in, and special interest group advocacy, or do they focus on transaction and regulation costs and cost-benefit analysis? These ques tions are part of the ongoing debate in public administration about the relative importance of economic and political criteria in budget decision making. Empirical evidence at the local level has informed this largely normative discussion. In this article, survey methodol ogy is used to explore classic economic and budgeting theories in the context of budget decision making, with particular attention paid to economic and political criteria.

Focusing on mayoral primary elections between 1967 and 1975 in Gary, Indiana, this article attempts to shed light on the voting calculations of the black electorate where race is not a factor. The main thesis is that Mayor Richard Hatcher's continued success in being reelected is based on two main factors: his superior political organization, and his satis factory policy performance in the eyes of the majority of the dominant black electorate. The data include a pilot survey of 121 black registered voters, and personal interviews with public officials, Hatcher organizational supporters, and members of the black electorate at large. Further, wider implications are inferred. For example, it is suggested that no black elected official can expect to remain in office for long unless he or she is able to main tain an effective political organization and, most importantly, appears to meet the felt needs of the majority of the black electorate. Blacks, all else being equal, calculate their votes on a black incumbent's policy performance and not his race.